Act now

The Pakistan military is prosecuting a psychological war against India, warns N.V.Subramanian.

By N.V. Subramanian (15 December 2008)

15 December 2008: First, there was the fake call from Pranab Mukherjee to the Pakistan president, Asif Zardari, threatening war over the Bombay terror attack. Now, there are fraudulent reports of IAF airspace violations of Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The game should be clear for anyone to see.

Pakistan, or more precisely, the Pakistan military, is indulging in a psychological war against India. On one side, the effort is to bamboozle Pakistan's elected government, which is new to the business of statecraft, and Zardari is not the most able of presidents.
On the other side, the aim is to put India on the defensive. Confronted with the so-called call made to Zardari, Pranab Mukherjee naturally reacted with anger and disgust. The anger and disgust were both directed at Zardari for his naïveté and for his well-advertised innocence to matters of governance. While Mukherjee did not make the point, the Pakistan press gleefully said that a professional soldier like General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistan army chief, would have never fallen to a ploy like a fake phone call from the Indian foreign minister.
Was any call made by anybody? The Pakistan government is not telling. Does it have evidence that Pranab called? It says it has but won't release the evidence. So, either Zardari or his office lied about the call, being part of the effort to put India under psychological pressure not to take the military route. Or, someone from the Pakistani military establishment decided to startle Zardari, but with the primary aim to put India on the defensive.
Pakistan would appear to have succeeded in this strategy. After the stink about the fake call, Pranab Mukherjee reiterated against any military action against Pakistan. Plus, that call was calculated to raise Western fears of an accidental India-Pakistan war which could go nuclear. Those fears have been raised. The result is a flood of high-powered foreign visits, including of the British prime minister, Gordon Brown. India might well claim how important it is to build world opinion against Pakistan, but it is working - as Pakistan wants it - to severely circumscribe India's hard options.
One of India's options has been surgical strikes against terrorist camps, including those of the Jamaat-ul-Dawa in Pakistan Punjab and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. This magazine has never considered surgical strikes as an option. But in private conversations with visiting dignitaries, the government, including prime minister Manmohan Singh, has spoken in those terms. This has been conveyed to the Pakistanis by special envoys like John McCain, the failed US presidential candidate against Barack Obama.
See the Pakistani false alarm against IAF alleged airspace violations in that light. If the fake call to Zardari from Pranab Mukherjee was meant to get India defensive about a military strike against Pakistan, the present disinformation campaign, which has all the hallmarks of a military-intelligence disinformation campaign, is designed to counter any Indian resolve for a surgical strike. With each passing day, Pakistan is winning the psychological war against India.
India has made several false moves. Ruling out a military strike is one. Earlier, Pranab Mukherjee was neither ruling it in nor ruling it out. That was giving Pakistan cold sweat. No longer. Plus, the insistence on the trial of the Pakistani terrorists under Pakistani law is strange, on the ground that Indian and Pakistani laws are not dissimilar because of their common British origins. The fact is that the legitimately appointed chief justice of Pakistan, Iftikar Muhammad Chaudhry, was dismissed by the previous military government of Parvez Musharraf, and not been reinstated by an elected Pakistan government either. In these circumstances, should one seriously expect trial and conviction of Pakistani terrorists who have attacked India? India should consistently demand the handover of the terrorists, regardless of their being Pakistani or of Indian origin. Once India is inflexible on that point, it won't lead to Pakistan demanding evidence against them, which then produces a flurry of misleading statements on one side and fudge on the other.
At some point, India must set a deadline for getting the terrorists to trial here. There is no call to publicize this deadline, but its end should be signaled by an end to India's public diplomacy against Pakistani terrorism. The military option should be revived, as too surgical strikes. The Indian military has always held there is considerable space under the nuclear overhang where either option can be exercised, but the political judgment will be final.
What's being said is, this pressurizing of Pakistan cannot be open-ended. There is clear and growing evidence that Pakistan is indulging in counter propaganda. India must regain the initiative. It must have to send a message, a message articulated in the immediate aftermath of the terrorism in Bombay, that India has exhausted the approach of building a world consensus against Pakistani terrorism. India will act now, and at the time and place of its choosing.
N.V.Subramanian is Editor, NewsInsight.net. Har-Anand, Delhi, has published his new novel, Courtesan of Storms.

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